Putting AIDS on the road to extinction

„After 30 years and 30 million funerals, the end of the global AIDS epidemic is suddenly, unexpectedly, within sight. It would be a final victory for this clever killer if America were too preoccupied and inward-looking to notice and act. During the last 18 months, the science of AIDS prevention has been transformed. Studies have shown dramatic results from male circumcision — a more than 60 percent reduction in the risk of transmission from women to men. New technologies such as microbicides have proved effective when used before exposure to the disease.

Then, three months ago, came an article in the New England Journal of Medicinetitled »Prevention of HIV-1 Infection with Early Antiretroviral Therapy«. The study found a 96 percent decrease in transmission to a heterosexual partner when AIDS treatment was begun early. Treating AIDS sooner than later is a dramatically effective form of AIDS prevention.

Scientists began considering something previously unimaginable. What if these methods of AIDS prevention were combined — along with condom use and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission — and aggressively applied in the most affected regions and among the most vulnerable groups in Africa? Scientific models project that transmission rates, already declining in most places, would fall an additional 40 percent to 60 percent.”